Chapter 7
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Translator: MadScientist
Chapter: 7
Chapter Title: Entrance Stage Yuyeon (2)
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Yuyeon fell asleep around lunchtime and woke up as the sun was setting.
She now carried quite the air of an immortal cultivator.
First thing, instead of washing up and combing her disheveled hair, she lightly circulated her energy.
No one had taught her, but she had naturally realized the proper method on her own.
Her entire body's energy resonated in response. The faintly accumulated yin energy converted back into spiritual energy, supplementing her spiritual veins. Her messy hair and wrinkled clothes tidied themselves up as a bonus.
Washing up wasn't necessary from the start anyway. Yuyeon had obtained the Pure White Body since yesterday, so no filth emerged from her body.
Of course, her body hadn't produced much filth even before. Anyway.
And Yuyeon was no longer hungry. Precisely, her stomach felt empty.
But a spiritual body could replenish the nutrients needed for movement and parts of its physical structure with spiritual energy.
So even if she starved like this for a month, she wouldn't lack the energy to move her spiritual body just because she couldn't eat. Having fully digested the spiritual energy she had absorbed into her spiritual body, she wasn't hungry right now either.
In other words, any further deficiencies or obstacles to her escape had instantly vanished for Yuyeon.
Her realm had skyrocketed, costing her half a day, but it was worth it.
So instead of hitting the road right away, Yuyeon decided to take stock of the situation first.
As for pursuit, her rising cultivation had given her her own countermeasures, so her worries were gone.
Next, she pondered whether all this was mere coincidence.
It wasn't pure chance. There was a chain of causality at work.
Her cultivation stacking up all at once wasn't strange, given how specially she had been born in so many ways.
And awakening her spiritual root precisely on the night of her escape just happened to align with that old Daoist arriving to take her as a disciple right around then. It could be chalked up to a reasonable coincidence.
Yet something felt off. Why? Yuyeon couldn't give a precise answer.
'But there were just too many fragmentary pieces.'
Yuyeon couldn't shake the suspicion that everything, from the moment she was born, had fallen within some being's arrangement.
Aptitude was the faculty that bordered on enlightenment.
And enlightenment was where the result preceded the cause.
Yuyeon felt her aptitude sharpen further. It was the harmony born of her realm's ascent.
'So is it thanks to this strengthened aptitude? Now I can sense it.'
That soon, she would encounter another arrangement.
This rubbed her the wrong way.
She had made the best judgment possible with her resources, abilities, and information.
'And that's why it was seen through. Funny as it sounds, I got played.'
By something inexpressible.
Yuyeon gazed at the empty altar and the shattered incense burner. From that, she could guess why this shrine lacked a divine object.
Another being had probably erased the god that once resided here.
The shrine itself was intact, but with the god gone, the worshippers had fled.
Soon after, the reason why that being had wiped out the shrine's god felt almost tangible.
But she forgot it immediately.
Her only intuition was that whatever had originally dwelled here was insignificant.
Still, as a guest who had spent one night there, Yuyeon prayed for its peace. She didn't know if it had been virtuous in life.
'If virtuous, may you be reborn in paradise. If wicked, repent and live anew.'
After her prayer, Yuyeon grew irritated by this persistent visitor that kept showing up since gaining cultivation.
The phenomenon of knowing something without reason, then forgetting without reason.
It made her blood boil. It felt like a pen and eraser were scribbling and erasing in her head at will.
But that strange intuition fired again, letting her realize what this was.
Immortal cultivation was ultimately the process of accumulating enlightenment.
Thus, gaining enlightenment was called true contemplation or seated meditation.
In other words, for cultivators at least, meditation and insight could be considered equivalent.
And in enlightenment, the conclusion came first.
The cause followed after.
So the cause wasn't important.
On the contrary, it was a hindrance to cultivation.
Exaggerating a bit, that "cause"—the reason for enlightenment—was precisely what sparked the tribulations that ruined cultivation.
For example.
Someone attains an enlightenment.
But it's more than they can handle. Normally, they should digest only part of it and let the rest go.
Instead, greed drives them to force-fit reasons based on their existing knowledge to assimilate it fully.
This breeds misunderstanding, corrupting the enlightenment.
With the enlightenment ruined, all connected enlightenments collapse like dominoes.
Yuyeon realized this was the Insight Heart Tribulation—a heart demon and form of tribulation for cultivators.
This was the mental state of cultivators. Yuyeon's too. And hers was especially severe.
Because she possessed extraordinary aptitude.
So despite how frustrating and irritating it was, Yuyeon had to grow accustomed to this sensation of conclusions arriving relentlessly.
In truth, she had already handled it deftly in her dream. She had realized something tremendous, only to forget even the enlightenment itself—why or what it was.
Knowing the reason would be dangerous instead. Before intellect could catch up, intuition seized the conclusion first and erased the rest.
This was the mentality of a cultivator, the structure of enlightenment.
However, for other cultivators, the process operated very slowly.
Enlightenments came occasionally, and their unnecessary branches faded gradually.
That was why cultivators, upon gaining enlightenment, entered seated meditation to empty their minds and safeguard it from corruption.
But Yuyeon's aptitude was too exceptional.
A koan would arise, and enlightenment would strike immediately. Before her intellect could trace it back to the koan, her intuition extracted the conclusion from the enlightenment and wiped it away.
Far from misunderstanding, she grasped the conclusion in an instant—but ended up ignorant of the enlightenment's content or reason.
Like the realization just now.
Yuyeon had concluded that no being occupied this shrine.
Right after, she tried to pinpoint why. The moment she sought to fabricate a reason from the circumstances, the enlightenment fled.
If she didn't want to forget an enlightenment, there were two methods.
One: raise her realm. Her mind would expand, her Dao Heart deepen, preventing the enlightenment from fading, allowing her to savor it longer.
Or, every time enlightenment struck, enter meditation and perform true contemplation until she forged a proper reason. The reverse of what ordinary cultivators did.
Having realized the workings of her own mind, Yuyeon turned her thoughts to her future cultivation.
Not just cultivation, but the direction of her journey as well.
Her original goal had been to escape the old Daoist.
Whether he was good or evil, she didn't know. But would she meekly surrender to a fifty-fifty chance? Yuyeon absolutely could not.
It would be like abandoning herself. Giving up on her very self.
Thinking of that choice soured her mood.
She didn't realize it yet, but that feeling welled from her Dao Heart.
It was the rejection instinct that triggered when a cultivator attempted actions unfit for their Dao Heart.
This marked the moment Yuyeon's purpose for her journey took shape.
Just as at the start of this life, she refused to let anyone else dictate her fate.
'To protect myself, I need power. Not just my life. Things beyond that.'
The greatest aim of cultivators—longevity, and ultimately eternal immortality—still felt distant to her.
Only the desire to grow stronger. That aspiration for cultivation ignited within her.
A simple goal, yet fiercely potent and crystal clear.
In other words, her resolve to attain the Dao had deepened.
Or put differently, she was now aligned with her Dao Heart—and it had solidified.
The Dao Heart was no mere abstraction. Not for a cultivator, at least.
The range of her Divine Sense expanded by another zhang, reaching a total of four zhang that she could sense in her mind.
Deepening the Dao Heart meant strengthening consciousness. And that naturally led to expanding Divine Sense.
'Divine Sense growing on its own again. Not a bad thing.'
Good was good. Recalling her prior progress, she decided to release the Concealing Form Formation and gauge how far her Divine Sense had advanced.
She didn't expect it to quadruple from its suppressed state to forty zhang upon release.
'The increase won't be that drastic. Divine Sense gradually piercing the formation was a simple matter anyway.'
With her understanding of the Concealing Form Formation, Yuyeon could predict it fairly accurately.
She guessed it was simply the result of what needed concealing growing too vast compared to the formation's effect.
To verify, she resolved to fully dismantle the Concealing Form Formation she had maintained for so long.
Its disappearance would cause all sorts of problems, so it wasn't an easy choice.
But Yuyeon was confident. Confident she could recreate it upon dismantling—no, craft something even better suited to her.
She had comprehended it over a long time, after all.
She just lacked the ability to install her own back then. Her cultivation had been too low.
So she had sustained the Daoist's formation by replenishing its energy whenever it frayed. Like tossing fresh logs onto a weakening fire.
But now, spiritual energy coursed through her that could become the fire itself.
No need to feed fuel to someone else's flame. She could simply kindle her own.
As her spiritual veins formed the simplest, most vigorous circulating loop, her Divine Sense exploded outward. At the same time, the Concealing Form Formation vanished without a trace.
It surpassed the initial limit of five zhang, hitting ten, then fifteen, and a bit more to settle at sixteen zhang.
Why exactly sixteen? Another realization: she had started with about ten zhang.
Condensing her Dao Heart had brought it to fifteen. And just now, its strengthening pushed it to sixteen.
Indeed, thanks to her condensed Dao Heart, unfolding sixteen zhang didn't drain her mental power right away. Though she couldn't sustain it all day.
Yuyeon now began gradually contracting her Divine Sense.
In the past, without a Dao Heart, she had unknowingly relied on the pre-existing Divine Sense. But now it was different.
'As expected. Now I can control the Divine Sense itself.'
Yuyeon experimented with simply expanding and contracting its range.
As she willed it, the spherical Divine Sense deformed—maintaining its volume but reaching farther, like a flattened ellipsoid.
Its maximum range remained fixed at sixteen zhang, however. Attempts to push beyond were futile.
This sensation differed from an arm stretched to its limit.
'Closest analogy might be sending a drone too far until it crashes and can't return. Hard to pin down exactly, but I know it's a lack of ability.'
Even so, it marked tremendous progress in securing her field of vision. The reduced volume also took less mental effort to maintain, which pleased her.
Yuyeon could now extend her Divine Sense narrowly to fluidly cover the maximum sixteen zhang ahead.
She needed to watch her rear too, and for efficient mental use, a spherical spread was best for daily life.
But if she ever fought someone, she wouldn't lose track of them even at sixteen zhang apart.
If she faced an attacker striking from beyond sixteen...
'Nothing for it. I never planned to clash head-on anyway.'
She had run away because she trusted her escape skills, not because the Namgung Manor Lord had taught her some peerless technique.
With her Divine Sense check complete, Yuyeon now prepared to deploy the formation anew.
She wasn't a true formation master. But after maintaining this one so long, she had become its equal to that old Daoist.
'No—maybe even surpassing him.'
Buoyed by that confidence, she modified some parts based on experiential tweaks. Others, she reshaped via intuitive flashes of inspiration and enlightenment.
Yes, enlightenment again. Now familiar with it, she opted not to question it.
She unfurled her newly devised Concealing Form Formation.
Not by crafting flows within her body as before, but by shaping the spiritual energy swirling through her spiritual veins into the formation's very pattern.
'This way, no need to tediously patch it every time I use energy.'
Fine-tuning all her body's spiritual energy required some trial and error.
About half a shichen later, the new formation was complete.
Her Divine Sense shrank back to four zhang, but the advantages far outweighed that.
It was a true Concealing Form Formation now—not just hiding her energy, but her very form.
The new version concealed far more, far more discreetly.
This was what Yuyeon trusted in.
Even a cultivator superior to her wouldn't detect her without Divine Sense. No experience to back it, but still.
People were now like partial blind—unable to register her even staring right at her.
Yuyeon felt proud and pleased. She imagined bestowing a sliver of her own nature upon the world, one person at a time.
Thus, as she focused on her newfound cultivation and recovered her energy, night deepened once more.
This time, Yuyeon truly departed the shrine.
She wouldn't stop until she reached her destination.